Why the ambulance service is in trouble
The July meeting of the WC Health Scrutiny Committee heard from South Western Ambulance Service, which covers a huge area including Wiltshire. They have a problem of excessive waiting times for call-outs. It's caused mainly by the fact that when they take a patient to hospital there is often nowhere for the patient to go, so they have to wait in the ambulance, which has to wait at the hospital, which makes it unavailable for other people.
On the positive side the number of incidents requiring an ambulance call-out has reduced slightly in recent weeks, and the percentage of people not needing to go to a hospital has increased.
The problem peaked in April, when in one week 1600 resource hours were lost due to handover delays, with Bath's RUH being the main culprit. That's dropped to nearer 500 lost hours in recent weeks, which is still enough to severely disrupt the service.
SWAS has produced a plan to recover the situation, but so far the plan isn't working, so long waits for ambulances are likely to be with us for some time.
On a separate issue the Health Minister claimed that the Government has procured £30m worth of resources to help with ambulance services facing unprecedented demand heading into this weekend's heatwave - but reports in the media contested this.
The Health Minister must urgently come clean about whether or not the government has contracted surge support for ambulances or not.
We are just 48 hours away from a heatwave health emergency and already ambulance services are buckling under the pressure.
This is no time for sloppy statements from Ministers. This is a matter of life or death. If these surge services aren't procured then we need to know now, and be told immediately what other resources will be made available for ambulance trusts.